Sports of The Times; A Sport's Image Pains a Coach to His Roots

By George Vecsey

Published: May 6, 2006

IN the middle of an epic season, the coach felt the need to apologize to his team.

''I said, 'I haven't been myself, but I will be myself again,' '' John Danowski recalls.

His surrogate sons know why Danowski has been suffering. His Hofstra lacrosse team is ranked second in the nation, the highest the school has ever been rated, but Danowski's own son, Matt, has been sidelined with the rest of the Duke team, after a woman the team hired to dance at a party in March accused three players of raping her.

Two players have been charged among the 41 who are believed to have been present at the party, and the district attorney has said he is gathering evidence to possibly indict a third person. The team's season was first suspended by the president of Duke, Richard H. Brodhead, and then canceled altogether.

The case has stamped the sport with the image of entitled preppies, lacrosse sticks in their hands, marauding across the favored campuses of America.

This sudden new stereotype is staggering to John Danowski, who knows a thing or two about the role of sport in America. His father, Ed, was a quarterback during Fordham's glory days in the early 1930's and later coached there. Danowski grew up playing lacrosse on the decidedly non-preppie flatlands of Nassau County, and saw his daughter, Kate, play at Quinnipiac, and his son, Matt, choose upscale Duke over Hofstra.

Last year Danowski was a proud spectator as Duke competed (and lost to Johns Hopkins) in the N.C.A.A. finals. This year, in a bizarre turn, Hofstra is a potential finalist, with a 15-1 record going into tonight's Colonial Athletic Association championship game at home.

Win or lose, Hofstra will be seeded high for next weekend's first round of the national tournament, but Duke will not be competing at all, adding to the pain John Danowski has felt since the scandal broke in late March.

''I was miserable,'' Danowski said Wednesday. ''I struggled with my sleeping. This became just a job. Where I normally have great joy in my students, I found myself tired, not myself. You deal with it, the same way you deal with it when you are not playing well.''

Every day, John Orsen, a senior midfielder from Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., would wander up to the lacrosse office, just to check on the coach.

''He has handled this so professionally,'' Orsen said Wednesday. ''He's the reason I came here. I knew Hofstra would be a good fit for me, but he was so down to earth with me. When he was recruiting me, he wouldn't even talk about lacrosse.''

Danowski is proud of being a teacher. During a road trip to Pittsburgh this spring, he took his players to a Pirates' baseball game, and realized they knew little about the old Negro leagues. Later he distributed printouts on the Negro leagues, to be inserted in the players' lacrosse folders.

The father had stepped back when Matt was in high school, making his assistants do the recruiting and giving the son the emotional freedom to make his own choice. Now the father has seen the Duke program implode over the charges by an African-American woman who said she was raped and taunted by some Duke players in a bawdy night gone terribly out of control.

''Whatever happened, there was a perfect storm,'' said Danowski, who will not discuss the details. ''But things happen on all campuses.''

The low national view of the Duke players has been far from the high self-esteem of lacrosse people like Danowski, who talks proudly about the ''network'' of old boys (and recently old girls) who became doctors, lawyers, teachers and business people. Lacrosse has a tradition of tailgating by fans, and hard partying by players, but some of the Duke players may have been deteriorating into an obnoxious rogue squad. A study at Duke has indicated that administrators were not diligent in monitoring the players, and now the reputation of a sport has been tarnished.

''We heard some comments on one trip,'' Orsen said. ''If people are prejudiced, you put it out of your mind.''

Hofstra has come closer to being a national contender in lacrosse than in any other sport, first under Howdy Myers, a taciturn and brilliant coach who brought the sport up from Baltimore.''We weren't preppies,'' scoffed Lou DiBlasi, an animated and buff old grad who played football and lacrosse for Myers in the late 1950's. ''We'd play against those southern schools and they would call us football players, animals. We were, kind of.''

Under Danowski, who has a career record of 190-122, the Hofstra players are specialists, part of a proud network. They have learned they are affected by a breakdown many states away, just by looking at the pain in their coach's face.

Photos: John Danowski is the coach of Hofstra's No. 2-ranked lacrosse team. His son is on the beleaguered Duke squad. (Photo by John Dunn for The New York Times)(D1); Under John Danowski, Hofstra is 15-1 this season going into tonight's conference title game. (Photo by John Dunn for The New York Times)(pg. D7)